POS Gunnery

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POS Gunnery is a fairly specialised area, which can be hard to learn due to the skill requirements and expensive hardware. This article aims to teach you the fundamentals of POS gunnery, and can be used with or without the relevant skills and roles.

The Basics

Prerequisites

So, an enemy fleet just showed up at a defended POS. The call has gone out over vent to get there and kick booty. You charge into the system, dodge through bubbles and intys, arrive at the POS and think 'Yeah, large gun lovin time!'. You try to take control of a battery and it responds with the wonderful 'You are controlling 0 batteries, which is all you can control'. Yeah, forward planning is real boring, isn't it!

What went wrong? Well, for starters, you were missing the skill 'Starbase Defense Management'. You will need it, but to train it, you need Anchoring 5, so you'd best get training now. Once you have anchoring 5, grab Starbase Defense Management (about 1,000,000 ISK, so no excuses) and train it to level 4. This will allow you to control 4 defense batteries simultaneously, which will help a lot more than one controlled battery.

You will also need the correct roles assigned to you, which you will get once you hit [Rank].

Battery Control

Right, so, you have the skill and the rank, but it's still a little confusing as to how you control a battery. So, in some simple steps:

• Move within 15km of the control tower
• Right click on the gun you wish to control, and select 'Assume Control'
• Repeat step 2 for all guns you wish to control
• Click on one or more of the guns at the bottom of the screen, then target something (much like cycling a weapon on a ship). This process will take some time.
• Wait for the lock, then watch the fireworks!

There are a few things you must bear in mind, however. One, your ship will be completely immobile, and any active modules will deactivate at the end of their cycle. Second, if you take control of, or relenquish control of any gun, all other guns you control will loose lock, as well as stopping any locks in progress. Also, defense batteries can only lock one target at a time, so you must make sure you get the right target.

Battery types

There are several forms of defensive battery, all used in the same way but with different effects:

Gun batteries

Gun batteries come in 3 sizes (small, medium and large) and 3 flavours (laser, projectile and hybrid). There isn't much more to them than lock and shoot, except the sizes. Each size is 'upped by 1', so small guns use medium ammunition and are suited to shooting cruiser sized targets.

Missile batteries

Much like gun batteries, missile batteries come in 3 types; cruise, torpedo and citadel torpedo. They work just like normal missile launchers in terms of target type. A note about missile batteries is that they will be inoperable once the POS enters reinforced mode.

ECM, Tracking Disruption, Sensor Dampening, Warp Disruption, Warp Scrambling, Webification batteries

These work in exactly the same way as the normal modules, only with increased strength.

Energy Neutralizer batteries

These also work in the same way as traditional energy neutralizers, but deserve special mention in their own category because they are so powerful, especially in groups.

Battery maintenance

POS batteries do not look after themselves, so it is important to maintain them. Firstly, always make sure they have ammunition in them (even laser batteries, since crystals in POS batteries degrade over usage) by flying to the battery, right clicking on it and selecting 'Access Ammunition' (for projectiles, hybrids or missile batteries), or 'Access Crystal Storage' and 'Access Active Crystal' (for laser batteries). You should also make sure the batteries are fully repaired at all times...a battery will become incapacitated (unusuable) once it takes structure damage, and will not be usuable again until the structure and armour are back to 100%.

If you do check the ammo and it is low, refill it accordingly (and with care if there are non Agony in local) and, if more than 5 guns needed refilling, tell your mentor (if you have one) or squadron admiral (if you don't have a mentor), so more ammo can be flown out to the POS.

Battery coordination

The advantage of manually using POS batteries is that fire can be coordinated to best effect. Frigates will need to be webbed before small guns can fire at them, and capital ships will need to be neuted, but otherwise fire should be massed on single targets at a time, so as to overwhelm even the strongest tank. Other than that, application of common and battle sense should be applied...you wouldn't use an inty to kill a carrier, so why use small guns against a carrier if cruiser targets still exist.